Isaac Asimov 2430 Now

, the house magazine of IBM. It is set in the year 2430, a time when Earth has reached a state of "perfected" uniformity. Plot Summary In this future, Earth is home to 15 trillion humans

The narrative centers on a man named , considered an eccentric deviant because he maintains a small, illegal zoo. This zoo contains the very last non-human animals on Earth. Government representatives, Alvarez and Bunting, eventually pressure Cranwitz into euthanizing his pets, arguing that they are an unnecessary drain on the planet’s resources. isaac asimov 2430

: Cranwitz eventually relents and kills his animals. Overcome by the loss of the world's last original biological diversity, he commits suicide , the house magazine of IBM

Asimov selected this specific date based on a mathematical calculation: if the human population continued to double every 35 years, by the year 2430, the total animal biomass of Earth would consist entirely of human beings. The World of 2430 A.D. This zoo contains the very last non-human animals on Earth

Asimov implies that the Seldon Plan is a front. The true guardian of humanity is a robot bound by the Zeroth Law ("A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm"). In Foundation and Earth (1986), we learn that Daneel has been manipulating events from a secret moon base for millennia.

During this epoch, humanity is no longer bound to Earth, but it has not yet united under a single galactic government. It is a time of fragmentation, exploration, and the wildcat days of hyper-spatial travel. Unlike the sterile, predictable Empire of Hari Seldon’s time, the era of 2430 is historically analogous to Earth’s Age of Sail or the Wild West—dangerous, politically volatile, and ripe for storytelling.

He would probably be annoyed that people still call him a “futurist.” He was a biochemist and a writer. He would be delighted that his Black Widowers mystery stories are still in print. He would be horrified that we still haven’t colonized a planet outside the Solar System. And he would be quietly satisfied that his name is not a relic, but a verb.